For the life of me I just can't figure out Mitt Romney's economic logic. I've enjoyed a pretty good formal education and nearly 40 years of business experience, but more than anything I am most proud of my common sense. Mitt is a brilliant man, no doubt, but his plan to create jobs and grow the economy just defies (my) common sense.
He says he wants to cut taxes for the rich, or at least include them in the extension of the soon-to-expire Bush tax cuts, and that they (the rich) will then use this increased wealth to create jobs. But from all I've read, including in the Wall Street Journal (hardly a leftist rag), there is somewhere between one and two TRILLION dollars in capital sitting on the sidelines waiting to be invested long-term. What's missing is consumer demand to buy more of the stuff these new businesses/jobs would produce. If there's no demand, why produce it?
Because of their vast numbers, estimated to be 50% of all Americans, the middle class drives our consumer-based economy. The poor can't buy enough to create jobs because they, by definition, have no money. The rich have plenty of money, but there aren't enough of them to buy in the mass quantities needed to drive industry. That leaves the middle class to "spend, baby, spend".
When the middle class has enough money (and is confident enough to part with some of it), then demand will increase, businesses will produce more goods and services to satisfy the demand, and jobs will be created, in that order. To think you can create jobs and THEN wait for demand to catch up defies common sense. No business is going to pay employees to just sit around and wait.
I'm sick of hearing about how the rich need more money. I'm not saying they shouldn't have more money. What I am saying is what we ALL need right now is for the MIDDLE CLASS to have more money, for it is they, not the rich, who will return us to prosperity. That's just common sense.
S
